Blogical Conclusion

 

ZEST LA VIE

In which I find out how different a vacation in ho-hum Kodaikanal can be…

JUNE 10, 2007 - SOMETHING CURIOUS HAPPENS when you bite into mint chutney sandwiches in the middle of a forest – while squatting on an outcropping of rock on a trickle of a stream, and surrounded by nothing but crisp, clean air and silence. You begin to think. You begin to think, for instance, whether you really have to return to the sweltering afternoons of Chennai from here, Kodaikanal. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy yourself a little cottage like the one you’re staying in – that log hut looking as if were blueprinted from a picture-postcard vision of Frontier America? Wouldn’t it be nice if your window framed a tree with purple flowers bobbing in the breeze, just the way it does now? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a replica of the tiny verandah where you sipped coffee this morning, the space that overlooked a tinier garden with its wild flowers you have no names for and its lattices of grass sprouting around the square-shaped blocks of stone?

And then a leech burrows itself into the foot of the man squatting beside you – and these thoughts evaporate into the eucalyptus-scented mists hovering some hundred feet above. Trust me – nothing dispels romantic notions of a getaway in the hills quicker than the sight of salt being sprinkled on a black thing burrowed halfway into pink flesh. (That way, it falls off, I’m told helpfully; if you try to yank it off, its suckers might stay in and cause infection.) Suddenly the mint chutney sandwich has lost its flavour, and my appetite isn’t helped when, on the way back, we gather around a particularly smallish mass on the ground. Someone asks if it’s from a bison, which we’ve been told to watch out for, but our expedition leader – a strange man with an infinite capacity for seeing pathways in forests where everyone else sees a blockade of trees – reassures us that it’s not. A bison would leave behind much larger deposit.

But I complain too much – for this man has delivered on Zest’s promise of showing us a Kodai we haven’t seen before. It sounded at first as if he were pitching for a brand of ketchup, with a constant refrain of “It’s different,� but things became clearer as he outlined his strategy: no boating on overpopulated lakes, no wussy oohing and aahing at nature from a safe distance. Instead, he charted out an itinerary that included a cycle ride down the ghats, through hairpin bends and with monster cars and trucks looming ahead without warning as you wrestled with gravity to regain control over your brakes. Even the sights of civilisation are different. Just that morning, as I stepped outside my cottage – with a green picket fence protecting it from the deep chasm that it overlooked; it was, quite literally, a home at the end of the world – I came across a scaled-down cricket pitch, its red earth made redder by a small spell of rain. A lone stump stood erect, the other two crossed at its feet in a surrealist’s depiction of a multiplication sign.

A couple of treks, later that evening, are almost as surreal. The first one begins with a visit to a nature spot so virginal, it hasn’t even been named. It’s referred to, quite simply, as Nature Spot. A bit of a trudge further, we reach Nature Spot 2, which offers a better view of the hills. Our guide points to a patch of gold far away. It’s a forest fire, he says, and then asks us to look at the blackened vegetation around us. That’s due to a forest fire too. More flecks of gold appear at a distance, but this time it’s just the lights going on in the houses that dot the landscape. In daylight, these constructions stood out like ugly sores, but now, their outlines smudged, they’re just a glittering carpet of night. It’s really dark as we begin the drive to the forest for the next trek – one we’re assured is even more different. We pass the centre of the city, where the irregular light reduces the sign for Hotel Ruby into a decidedly shadier Hotel Rub. A half-hour later, the van stops.

It’s the forest. We’re asked to step out and walk. We’ve barely put one foot in front of the other, when our guide informs us to be careful, “because one side is a really steep drop� – which may be a scary enough prospect during the day, but is positively terrifying during this pitch-black night, when only the voices of those around remind us that we are not alone. He terrifies us even more by switching on his mobile phone, presumably to light our way, but all I can see is his huge, strapping figure outlined by an eerie phosphorescence. It’s different, all right, this trip to Kodaikanal, if only for this man. He laughs later, “The guys I bring here, they don’t know whether to love me or hate me.� We believe him, and we laugh along hard, not finding this the remotest bit funny. But when we return to the resort, he makes up for his (over)enthusiastic adventurousness by revealing an unexpectedly gentle side. By the bonfire, he turns guitar-strumming troubadour, belting out – not headbangers, as I’d have imagined, but – soft-rock classics by The Eagles, Bread and The Beatles. It’s good music in a good atmosphere, with clouds blocking the view of most of what’s around – it’s like starring in your own dream sequence, with God’s own smoke machine providing the special effects.

Copyright ©2007 The New Sunday Express